Best New Lightweight, Compact Lawn Edgers

Surely as grass grows, it eventually overgrows the lawn-pavement boundary. You can try to sever this overgrowth with a string trimmer, but a better idea is to equip the trimmer with a retrofit head or buy one of the new breed of lightweight and compact edgers. New machines are half the size of a traditional vertical-wheel edger.

Mach 4 Trimming System

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What: Replaces the string head on a trimmer with a simpler, more rugged head that uses four flexible nylon blades. Trims and edges.

Advantage: Disassembles without tools. The best retrofit head I've tried.

Cost: Head is about $25, in-cludes four blades; an eight-pack of re-placement blades is $4.